Support is requested for a community wide experiment to critically assess the current state-of-the-art in the prediction of protein structure from sequence (CASP). The experiments for which funding is requested will cover CASP6-CASP8, i.e. the sixth to eighth such experiments in a series. Previous experiments were held biannually from 1994-2002. A total of over 300 groups have submitted over 80,000 individual predictions to all CASP meetings. The goal of CASP is to provide an in-depth and objective assessment of our current abilities, and to assess progress since the last experiment. CASP is undoubtedly the major event in the field of structure prediction, in the sense that all groups who impacted this field significantly over the last decade have participated in this experiment. CASP also offers an excellent opportunity for training newcomers in sequence analysis. [unreadable] [unreadable]